


weight on her shoulders cracked her soul

by milfbyers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Sad Joyce Byers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25565860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milfbyers/pseuds/milfbyers
Summary: if one emotion could be attached to joyce byers, it would be guilt. and this is why.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	weight on her shoulders cracked her soul

**Author's Note:**

> *mentions of eating disorder. it's not graphic but it's still mentioned and hinted at. please do not read if this is something that will effect you. 
> 
> i listened to 'september song' by agnes obel and 'o children' by nick cave and the bad seeds while writing this so i recommend listening while reading.

joyce was familiar with her emotions. well, she was familiar with the ones that made her heart ache. the ones that made her chest blossom with long overdue blooms of flowers were shoved to the side to wilt in the shadows of her heaviest emotions. a glimpse of comfort from other people who would take her hands in her own and say her name with such tenderness would make her chest tighten and her mouth set into a hard line. there was nothing she felt she deserved less than comfort. she was afraid of the monster brewing inside her. she feared it’s snarls and claws would send them away in fear, or worse, get them too, so she locked herself and the monster away in cages where she was unable to reach the key she threw away years ago.

the intensity of joyce’s guilt ate away at her stomach. it tore her insides, nagging for her attention if she were able to find the strength to stray away. her strongest emotion became as well known to her as her right arm. joyce knew what made it gnaw the most and what sent it away to bother someone else for a little bit. she was more familiar with this emotion than the friends she thought she would know forever after they shared their souls in the glow of the street lamps.

if she could break her life into chapters, there would be no ‘before the guilt’ and ‘after the realization of the guilt’. instead, her chapters would highlight the explanations, where the guilt started and why it’s grown. joyce allowed herself to dwell on it but not without a cigarette hanging from her lip. and only while alone. because if the sobs wracked her body and sent her into screams, she didn’t want anyone around her to see it. she needed to do it alone. joyce byers knew how to handle the storm even if the weight of it sitting on her shoulders started to crush her soul.

joyce knew she didn’t want to marry lonnie. she thought about the wrongdoings of her past as she made will’s lunch for school. peanut butter on the left side, jelly on the right. cut in half right down the middle. she thinks back of the tugging at her gut when she thought about marrying him. how when the ring was making a home on her left hand, she felt the need to be sick when looking at it. joyce knew she was doing something wrong, something she would carry with her for the rest of her life. but, sometimes, she misses him. only sometimes. when the feeling comes crashing into her chest and washes her in an ache that only he knows how to aid, she feels helpless. her fingers itch to ring his number, to lower her voice and whisper his name. she wants to beg for his presence in her house. even when he was there, he was too loud, too big. he was suffocating. but she needed him… sometimes.

joyce was proud of herself when there were moments of silence between them. for the weeks where her skin went untouched by his calloused hands and when she didn’t call his number when she couldn’t get herself off the kitchen floor. but all of her progress would be erased when he crossed into the threshold once more. she tore herself apart the morning after. joyce stood in the shower after he left. the water burning her skin until it was raw. the stinging became the only thing she could feel. she preferred it over the guilt. she learned she could never wash that away. especially not after such an affair. joyce stepped out of the shower, dressed and began to strip the bed. in order to pretend it never happened, she needed to get rid of the evidence. she began with her sheets.

now, she stood and stared at the same washing machine. it roared to life. it was loud and joyce was sure it needed to be repaired soon (or rather, needed repairing two months ago) but she turned her back to it and walked away. surrounding her were reminders of every reason why lonnie shouldn’t have been allowed to crawl back into her life and into her bed. will’s crayons sat discarded on the coffee table next to a half finished drawing. jonathan’s folder for school was tossed on the kitchen table, probably awaiting her signature on some field trip permission form she couldn’t afford. she rubbed at her eyes. it never stopped raining. her chest flooded with the storm. it overflowed. it started leaking into every other part of her body. the thunder racked her bones and left her shaking. the lightning struck her lungs and caused her to become breathless. when she ran her hands through her boy’s hair, she was scared that when she pulled away, there would be droplets of her clinging to them. as if somehow, when she touched another person, her emotions left damage on them, too. if she was being honest, it felt like that some days.

her hands remained clenched at her sides on days like those. her nails made half moon imprints of the skin of her palms. it would scar occasionally. her hands and the damage done to them served as another reminder of how her baggage couldn’t be unpacked. it sat in cramped suitcases and carry-on bags that crowded her shoulders. the evidence was in her hunched posture, the picked skin of her lip, her eyes that always looked full of unshed tears. it lingered in half eaten dinner that was scraped into the trash and picked through breakfast. joyce hated how she wasted food. her budget could barely bend enough to afford the little they had and she continuously refused to keep it down. eventually, she stopped buying enough for three. her pantry was a little less full so the excuse of ‘i ate at work’ or ‘i’m not hungry’ became a lot easier to come by. jonathan wasn’t able to make her dinner or sit a plate of eggs and toast down in front of her morning coffee and cigarette.

joyce’s body carried the toll of her issues with eating just as poorly as she expected. the raw ache of her throat after throwing up her meals never fully went away anymore. it served as a reminder of another vice (the list of those just kept growing). her vision became cloudy every time she stood and she had to clutch at the table for thirty seconds before being able to walk. she could feel the pity in jonathan’s eyes when he looked at her. as he grew up, she seemed to get younger. the child taking care of the parent, a role she vowed to never fulfill. it just became another promise to her sons that she failed to keep. the guilt kept her awake at night.

she kept a lot of secrets. but the one that was unable to be locked away was that her demons were more than just portraits of her guilt. they became taunting faces that mirrored her anxiety, her trauma, her ptsd. the monsters inside of her paced across her heart, tracking dirt and mud across an already tattered organ. their teeth were always bared and their snarls lived inside the permanent lump in her throat. her screams became one with their roars. joyce became one with the monsters that took residency in the darkest corners of her mind and the most wilting sections of her heart. they haunted her nightmares. she knew she could not fight them off alone. but the action of asking for help was too grand of a gesture to complete. every time she thought about telling jonathan or calling murray, every time she opened her mouth to admit, “i can’t do this anymore” the effort was devoured by shame.

companionship terrified joyce. the concept of someone offering to share pieces of their life with her in return for nothing more than just her friendship made her palms sweat and her knees buckle. she had seen this ending before. she took the blame before the accident had the chance to occur. because everything, or everyone, she touched was ripped away. the fire that surrounded her turned the people she loved most into ash. the storm brewing inside of her drowned them and the monsters that resembled her a little too much jumped and lashed out leaving her scrambling to protect them from herself more than anyone. if it wasn’t her own demons that tore at them, it would be the ones on the outside that stalked her. the ones that lived underneath hawkins or inside of her son’s mind. they waited until the most vulnerable moment to sink their teeth in. whether it be inside the smothering walls of hawkins lab where the beasts caught up with bob, the four doors of her car when whispering goodbyes into the darkness after graduation to karen or on a blanket down by the river side with murray’s arm around her, they always managed to track her scent. no one was safe when side by side with joyce byers.

her body ached with the state of terror she lived in. it never rested. when seated on the couch, her hands pulled at the loose threads of blankets or when making breakfast, her mind tormented her with memories that felt miles away. she became friends with the throb of guilt in her chest. it nested in her heart and the vines pulled at her lungs. they grew and snaked up her throat, scratching and blooming into the lump that never left. thorns broadened out of the vines and struck at her mind. every thought was soiled, accompanied now by one worse. cigarettes piled on top of each other in ash trays but they don’t ease her mind like they used to. she was simply used to the pull of the nicotine, the burn of the smoke. she became familiar with everything bad and turned away from everything that could be considered good. joyce byers knew guilt better than she knew herself. but if she really thought about it, she became guilt and guilt became her. there was no escape. she didn’t have the energy to look for one anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> endless thank you's to kim, liz and annie. i am proudest of this fic but even more proud to call the three of you my friends. i love you forever.
> 
> milfbyers on twitter and milf-byers on tumblr


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